


Not Ready

by stylesoftheshire



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:01:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stylesoftheshire/pseuds/stylesoftheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis realises what he's let go now that Harry is with Nick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Ready

‘When did it stop being me?’

Harry stopped in his tracks on the way through the living room, his heart immediately leaping into his throat. He had never heard Louis sound so broken. 

He almost felt guilty until he remembered he had done nothing wrong.

‘Nothing has changed, Lou.’

Louis hugged his knees to his chest, looking so small where he sat alone on the large sofa where they used to cuddle like they were the only two people in the world.

‘Everything changed,’ he whispered.

Harry’s chest was aching. All he wanted to do was gather Louis up in his arms and press all the kisses into his hair that he had missed giving, but he couldn’t when part of him was still so resentful.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Nothing changed, but it should have. We could have changed things, but you didn’t want to.’

Louis blinked up at him, his eyes wide and scared, just like all those times when Harry would hold him at night and ask the same question of ‘when?’ only to get the same answer in return.

‘I can’t.’

Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair, already feeling exhausted. 

‘This conversation shouldn’t even be happening,’ he said, dropping himself down onto the chair opposite Louis. ‘You wanted it to be like this.’

Louis ducked his head down onto his arms, muffling his voice as he spoke.

‘No, I didn’t. I never wanted to stop being yours.’

Harry leant forward with his elbows on his knees, squeezing his eyes shut as he willed himself to be able to speak through the lump in his throat. 

‘You’re still my Louis,’ he said thickly. ‘It just means something different now.’

A shudder ran down Louis’ spine and Harry’s instinct was to rush to him and stroke down his back until his breaths were even again, but he just couldn’t.

‘Are you still mine?’ Louis asked quietly.

Harry stared up at the ceiling, begging for strength from a deity he had given up on believing in.

‘I’ll always be yours.’

‘You can’t be mine and his at the same time,’ Louis replied, his voice a little sharper than before.

Harry shuffled forward on his seat, bringing himself that barely noticeable bit closer.

The words weren’t coming to him like he had hoped they would. They all hung there in a useless mess of apologies, claims of love and wishes that he would just smile again. 

‘It’s different,’ he tried. 

Louis raised his head slightly, fixing him with his wet eyes and clenching something raw around his heart with the desperation he saw there.

‘Do you love him like you loved me?’

Harry could see how much it hurt Louis to ask that question, how much he wanted to be able to say ‘love’ and not ‘loved’ and it hurt him too. It hurt him so much to know that there was a chapter of his life he might never go back to because it was too battered and bruised to be legible.

‘There’ll be no one like you, Lou.’

A tear rolled down Louis’ face and he nodded slowly in a kind of acceptance that Harry didn’t want to see. He wanted to see Louis get angry, to show as much fire as he would when people used to make bizarre claims that hit so close to home that it frightened him. He wanted Louis to get to his feet and yell at him, to get so mad that Harry would know that he thought there was still something worth fighting for. 

Instead, he just sat there curled in on himself like he had given up, and it was shredding whatever was left of Harry’s dream to grow old with the first boy he fell in love with.

‘Are you happy?’ 

Harry jolted. He hadn’t been expecting that question.

He thought back to the day he had just had, lazing around Nick’s and not doing anything in particular except enjoying being in his company and being able to forget about everything else. He had laughed and joked and felt almost as at home as he did here, the kiss on his lips still fresh from when they had parted ways. 

‘I am,’ he said honestly, almost wishing he hadn’t when Louis made a small choking sound in his throat. 

‘Were you happy with me?’

Harry was shocked that he even had to ask. 

‘They were the best days of my life, Lou. You know that.’

Louis’ head shot up properly then, his face suddenly wrought with all the hurt that Harry had felt as well. 

‘Then why did it have to end?’ he wailed. ‘Why aren’t we still that happy? Why did you leave?’

Harry was crumbling, feeling the tears prick at the back of his eyes briefly before they spilled over and salted his lips.

‘You know why,’ he said, trying to keep his voice steady even as Louis’ chest was rising and falling rapidly. ‘And I’m not the one who left. I couldn’t hide anymore so you… you just let me go. You knew that this would happen.’

‘No! No, I didn’t!’ Louis exclaimed, unwrapping himself and jumping up from the sofa. ‘I didn’t know you’d find someone else!’

‘Louis, I—‘

‘No! Don’t tell me that I should have known, because how could I have known after all those times you told me you were so in love with me? If you loved me that much then how was it so fucking easy for you to ju—‘

As soon as the word registered with him, Harry sprung to his feet so he was towering over Louis.

‘Easy? You think it was _easy_ for me?’ he shouted in his face. ‘The person I love more than anything in the world was too fucking ashamed of our relationship to tell anyone and you think it was easy? All I wanted was for someone to be proud that I’m theirs without covering it up with lie after lie because they can’t admit to themselves what makes them happy! How was I to know where I would find that? You think I went running to Nick as soon as we split up to jump right in his bed? Do you think that fucking little of me? 

‘I went to him because I needed a friend. I needed someone who wasn’t going to hurt me time and time again like you did. Then you didn’t come back to me and after a while it stopped bothering me because there was someone who could say those three words in public without looking over his shoulder scared that someone would hear him. And you know what? It was nice. It was really fucking nice to know that someone cared about me enough to not care what anyone else thought.’

Louis stared up at him, something like panic swimming in his eyes before his knees buckled and he was sitting on the floor, hugging himself again.

‘You don’t think I love you enough,’ he muttered.

Harry’s chest was still heaving, still glaring down at Louis, but it felt misplaced. He didn’t know where he stood anymore.

‘I know you loved me, but —‘

‘Love,’ Louis interrupted. ‘I _love_ you. I love you more than I know how to love something. It’s scary to know that I would give my whole life over for someone else. What if we had told the world and they ruined it?’

‘Only if we had let them.’

‘But would I have more than I do now?’ Louis asked dejectedly, digging his nails into his forearms. ‘Would I still fall asleep on the sofa waiting for you to come through the door only to wake up in the morning and see that you never did? That you were with Nick all night instead? Would I still hate myself for seeing what used to be us in you and him?’

Harry sunk back down onto the chair, unable to tear his eyes away from his wretched best friend who would always be so much more than that.

‘We’ll never know,’ he said, part of him wanting that to not be true. 

Louis scooted himself along the floor until he was sat at Harry’s feet, gazing up at him excruciatingly.

‘Do you still love me?’ he asked, trembling fingers gripping at the hem of his jeans.

It was a question he should know the answer to, but it wasn’t so simple when faced with a beautiful boy who looked like the bottom was falling out of his world. 

He thought of Nick, how happy they are when they’re together and how there isn’t a worry in Harry’s head that he doesn’t know, including the part of him that’s clinging onto his past. Nick accepted his incomplete heart even if it hurt him too, but it made everything that little bit more wonderful knowing that he wasn’t hiding anything.

He thought of Louis and how things had burned so bright until fading to a glow that had been comforting until Harry had to squint to see it through all of the fear. He thought of how he had fallen head over heels and still hadn’t quite righted himself.

He thought of loving them both wholly and how much it would hurt to know that his heart was split between them, painfully cracked down the middle so there was nothing left of him that was just Harry anymore.

He thought of loving neither of them and knowing that he wouldn’t survive.

He thought of running away until nothing mattered, but Louis’ fingers were digging into his ankles and he knew he couldn’t leave him.

‘I love you,’ he said, because it was true no matter how much he wished it wasn’t. ‘But we’re not ready.’

Louis looked up at him questioningly, something like hope beginning to flicker in his sad eyes. Harry reached down and plucked his hands away from his jeans to hold them in his own. They were warm and familiar, but they were shaking and Harry didn’t have it in him to be the strength for both of them right now. All he could be now was the shoulder Louis cried on, not the arms that encircled him at night and kissed the smile onto his face.

‘Right now I need something else,’ he said softly, thinking of Nick’s carefree laugh. ‘But when you can face the world, we’ll be us again.’

Louis’ face scrunched up and a fresh tear followed a track that had already stained his cheek. 

‘What if we’re not? What if he keeps you forever?’

Harry shrugged, a gesture far too casual for what he was promising.

‘One day we’ll come back to each other.’


End file.
